Jay Mohr can be a little hard on himself. When he landed his breakout role in 1996 as Tom Cruise's rival sports agent in "Jerry Maguire," he kept watching the movie over and over again. Not to pump up his ego. No, he kept pressing play because he didn't like the way his teeth looked.

"I didn't have veneers on my teeth then. I looked at how crooked my teeth were," said Mohr, a Verona native coming home this Friday to perform at Bananas Comedy Club.

In his two-decade career, Mohr has crisscrossed across media — starring opposite Jennifer Aniston in the romantic comedy "Picture Perfect," creating and hosting his own reality show "Last Comic Standing," landing his own two-season CBS sitcom "Gary Unmarried" and most recently launching his own podcast network, Fake Mustache Studios, which produces his podcast Mohr Stories.

The way Mohr sees it, his work ethic is typical for a guy from Jersey. "No one hands you anything in New Jersey. Everybody with a deck and central air worked real hard to get it," he said.

At 16, Mohr started performing stand-up in "weird" New York City bars. He lied about his age, and asked to perform first so he could get home early on a school night.

He sees his ascent to success in very working-class terms. "When you choose a trade, you use that trade. I have chosen this as my way. It's what I wanted to do and has made me happy." When he performs at Bananas on Friday, he said, he expects half the audience to be childhood friends.

As much satisfaction as his career gives him, he's just as happy now to focus on his family.

He said his actress wife, Nikki Cox, is also a great writing partner. He described falling asleep next to her on a flight once, as she filled up half a notebook with jokes and ideas.

He and Cox had a son together in 2011. And he has another son from a previous marriage. Having more kids is definitely in his future plans. "It's an absolute circus. It's the most ridiculous, tiring and stressful and beautiful thing wrapped into these little packages. They're these tiny, terrible little people that run our lives," he said.

Right now, his easiest audience is his 18-month-old. Compared with his 10-year-old, he said, "I definitely make the baby laugh more. You peek around the corner and he cracks up."